This month’s Fearless Fridays interview is with Thomas Smallwood, one of a number of upcoming interviewees I ‘picked up’ recently over in the adventurous Yes Tribe (along with George from a few weeks ago as well). Although he didn’t necessarily follow the typical corporate career path after school, the symptoms are familiar: excessive stress, feeling unhappy, and losing the love for what he was doing. In 2016, he quit and gave himself a year to re-design his life.

Although an ongoing process, the re-design has been taking form and, as he describes on his website, Tom is now “Entrepreneur, Blogger, Mountain Enthusiast and Bibliophile”. In the interview, we talk about the messiness of the process, first in deciding to make a change and then in planning and implementing that change. What it boils down to, though, is simple: “If you’re not happy, have a think about what would make you happy!”

Watch the video for the full interview or read on to discover more about Tom’s experience below.

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From burnout to a better way

Thomas Smallwood started his career working in a bookstore before setting up an online business with his dad, selling used books online. When the business failed, he started stacking supermarket shelves at night to pay the mortgage, worked in a call centre, and then co-founded and sold another company. In 2016, he decided to quit what he calls the rat race and re-design his life in a way that gives him more freedom and flexibility, more time in the outdoors, and a rediscovery of what really makes him happy.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I think I was suffering from burnout but it crept up, gradually – it wasn’t anything that happened overnight. I actually left one job and went into another thinking that, “Okay, I wasn’t happy in that other one, I’ll go into another job and that’s going to resolve everything!” It was far from the case. I needed to rediscover my love of work and my love of life in a sense.

I felt that I needed to ‘reset’ myself and refocus on the things I love doing. In my private life, that has meant rediscovering the outdoors; in my professional life, it has meant being a little bit more entrepreneurial. That all sounds well organised but it was a messy year and a half in which I worked this out. There was no one moment, except when I phoned up and resigned and said, “Okay, that’s enough.”

I didn’t work for a couple of months – but I can’t not do anything! So I set up my website, The Armchair Mountaineer, as a way to keep myself busy and do stuff that interests me. I sat down and asked myself: what were the things that I enjoyed when I was 18 and penniless? And I used to go into the mountains with my friends. Of course, no one was reading the blog when I first set it up but it was something for me to do and think about. It ended up as a blog that’s now documenting my journey.

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

Fear, unquestionably. I’ve always suffered from a lack of self-confidence – I’m hardly unique in that, I think. I was fairly good at masking it at work, within that framework of the corporate life. But when you go out and do things on your own, there’s absolutely nowhere to hide. So, the biggest challenge has been dealing with the fear of wanting to make a change, of wanting to, in effect, redesign my life.

At every step of the way, the decisions that I make are entirely down to me. Although now, professionally speaking, I’m also working with other people and I enjoy that. But you know you can’t necessarily turn to someone else and ask, “Hey, what’s the best thing we should do now?” You just have to dive in!

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

Thomas’ wife has been a huge support through his transition, which has also meant that he now has more time to spend with her and with their daughter

My family – my wife, and I would say my daughter but she doesn’t really have a clue what’s going on, as she’s six years old! It’s a massive decision to step away from the ‘normal’ world of work and, although we were very fortunate that we had some financial security, it was good to have the most important person in my life there supporting me along the way.

Outside of that, it has been tricky. It might be because I don’t live in London, as I feel like it’s easier there to get into some kind of support community and to meet like-minded people. I do have a couple of supportive friends, one of whom is pretty entrepreneurial. He’s been a great support – when I’ve been having a bad day, quite often we’ll just have a chat for half an hour and it makes me feel better about things.

It’s really important to surround yourself with positive people, people who encourage you in what you’re doing. Co-working spaces can be good, just to meet human beings when you’re otherwise largely working from home. It’s good to get out there and meet people.

Facebook groups and communities can be good too. The Yes Tribe, for example, and there’s another one I would like to mention, Coffee with Dan, which is more geared towards entrepreneurs and not to everyone’s taste.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

It’s been pretty much exactly a year now, and I feel like I’m learning more than ever before. There are loads of ups and downs, and it really is an ongoing process. There’s an excitement that comes with the potential of the projects I’m working on, and this has enabled me to rediscover my passion for working while having the flexibility in my private life. I can get up at 6.30 am, do an hour of journaling, planning, writing, brainstorming, whatever; then I can get my daughter ready and do the school run; and I’m back before 9 am to have a coffee with my wife before I sit down to work again. It’s just such a nice way to start the day, every day, instead of being crammed onto a train!

Having a paddle! One of the perks of Thomas’ re-design…

On a bigger scale, I also get to travel a bit more with my family, around the school holidays. I can take my work with me, and fortunately my wife can as well – so it’s really about the flexibility. I also get to spend more time in the outdoors, even if it’s just going down to my local river five minutes from my house and having a paddle. How simple is that?

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

I gave myself a year – this year, 2017 – to change the way I live and work. I think giving myself this time was one of the best things I could have done, and I would encourage anyone who wants to make a change to have both patience and resilience. At the same time, it can’t be open-ended. I think you need to put a little pressure on yourself – otherwise, you risk doing nothing. Of course, there are financial pressures as well, which mean you can’t always just walk away. It’s a process, first, to get to the moment of committing to the change, and then it’s a process to implement it.

Once you’ve made the decision in your mind that you want to change things, look for ways of doing it and begin to implement it Get involved in the process – maybe through adding certain elements into your routine, sharing it with other people so that it becomes public, or joining communities of like-minded people. You need to do something that builds up positive pressure on you to actually go through with the change. Like in all journeys – physical, mental, or metaphorical – the first step is the hardest and once you start you are much more likely to finish! But it’s not going to happen overnight.

Also, one exercise that I do fairly regularly is to just take stock of what I’ve done over the last few months. It can be really banal things, like that I’ve learned something about email automation, to take a random example. When you start to make these kinds of lists, then you realise how much you can learn and progress over time.

You can find Tom’s blog and learn how he’s ‘finding a way to live better’ over at armchairmountaineer.com. You can also find out more about his latest startup, which helps entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow with Virtual Personal Assistants.

I’m happy to share a new career transition story, this month telling another tale of leaving the corporate 9 to 5 to follow your passion and ‘scratch the itch’ of working for yourself. Rachel Reunis, who I know from my time at Procter & Gamble (P&G), had a ‘perfect storm’ of factors coming together that led her to quit her full-time job and embrace a ‘now-or-never’ change that has involved setting up her own consulting business as well as pursuing her love of horses.

Like many of us, Rachel really liked her job for many years, she loved the business of luxury and beautiful products and learned a lot during her time in the big corporation. Over time, though, changes in the organisation, a change in her role and some stirrings within her culminated in a decision to quit without a concrete plan of what to do next. The decision itself, she says, is easy – it’s what happens next that can be a bit more tricky!

We talked about the struggle of choosing one idea when you have lots of different ideas and interests; the need to remember what’s important to you so you don’t get distracted by other people’s promotions and job titles and shiny social media presence; and the difficulty of staying focused and positive when the stuff you’re putting out there doesn’t do as well as you had hoped and no one is telling you that you’re doing a good job.

I’m a big fan of portfolio careers, which involve a combination of different skills and roles. Having a portfolio career means that you are keeping things interesting with a variety of projects and clients, you are diversifying your income across different types of work, and, if nothing else, you are bringing in income by leveraging your skills and experience from your corporate job while you build something new that you are even more passionate about. In Rachel’s case, she has a really complimentary portfolio of being an influencer in the equestrian fashion space on the one hand with providing small business consulting to others in that space on the other.

Rachel Reunis worked at Procter & Gamble for nine years, having already gained some work experience prior to that. During this time she worked in Prestige Products, the perfume/cosmetics department of P&G, in a number of different global sales and marketing roles. Having quit her job to ‘scratch the itch’ of working for herself, today she is developing a portfolio career that involves fashion and horses on the one hand and small business consulting on the other.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

Well, it was like a perfect storm of things coming together, to be very honest. I had been up for promotion for quite some time. I was doing okay, at least I was doing okay according to my standards, but, unfortunately, sometimes corporate standards are not completely in line with your personal standards. This I started seeing over the last year or two that I was working at P&G. When I came into P&G, I was not the standard ‘straight-out-of-university’ recruit, and I always felt like I never really got that moulding that a lot of people get, and that’s how they actually survive better in that type of corporate environment.

I guess nine years of survival still is pretty good, but I always felt like I wasn’t the ‘good soldier’. I often questioned things, and I unfortunately also often questioned them out loud, which wasn’t always the thing to do. It was again for me personally the right thing to do, but for the corporate environment, maybe not. And over the last year or two I had had an amazing time in one of my previous roles, and then I got put into a role where I didn’t feel quite comfortable. It just started coming together to a point that I thought, “Maybe this is just not for me, maybe I should just try and find a different corporation or do something for myself where I really feel that I can follow my own path and my own values.”

Again, that doesn’t mean that P&G weren’t good to me. They were very good to me, at the end as well. Apparently, they did appreciate what I did, but I just didn’t quite see that anymore at the end. But I left also at a time that the department was being sold, and strangely, I already felt that the year or two before, that something was in the pipeline but we just were not allowed to know about it yet. That’s probably also where the discomfort came from – because I knew we were doing things that were not really good for the company. I kept saying something about it, but there was quite frankly no point because we were going to be sold anyway.

That was a strange time, and it took me a while actually after leaving P&G to get over that and realign my gut feeling back with my brain, that they actually do work together and that it is okay to question things. I had to use that time for reflection to help me through that. That took about six or nine months, quite frankly, and then I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and that’s where I am right now.

It was an amazing school, it was better than school because it was hands on. You had to do it. And P&G was one of those companies that did, not always but usually, allow you to make a mistake or two. You could give it a go, you could try things, you could be strangely entrepreneurial within a huge business. Again, at the end that became a little bit more difficult, and I think that’s what then started to bug me a little bit: “Okay but wait a minute, I was allowed to do this for six or seven years, why not now?” Anyway, so we now know. Hindsight is 20/20, right?

So it was a perfect storm of circumstances internal and external, but at that time it was quite uncomfortable.

And it was the right time. I think it could have gotten worse. We parted as friends, and I’m happy that I didn’t stay longer because I think I might have started to resent the situation. It was okay. It was good.

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

Strangely, making the decision to leave was remarkably easy. I’m very much a person that thinks things over a million times. The moment I say it, it’s already pretty much done. I mulled this over a gazillion times, talked it over with my husband, talked it through with my friends, and then the moment I announced it, it was as if this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It was this like, ‘Ah, okay I’m done,’ and it was absolutely wonderful. Again, there are people who thrive in the business and people who are still there. For a lot of people, it still works (or it doesn’t and they stay, but that’s a different story). But for me, it was done, and it was just so nice to be able to say it.

Rachel has a huge and active following on Instagram and she had to turn her notifications off so as not to be completely overwhelmed and distracted!

Now after, that is when it became hard. If you do spend nine years in corporate heaven, and a couple of years before that within big companies as well, that’s how you’re wired. Working on your own, trying to figure out what the priorities are, what you really want to do, what is important, what is good, what is not, without having your annual review and your data to back you up – it’s really hard! I’m quite… let’s call it insecure in that sense. I like numbers because they don’t lie, and if they’re above 100 then it’s good, and if they’re under 100 then it’s not good! But in this individual working environment you don’t always have those numbers, so you really need to review how you figure out what’s good, what’s success… That has been really hard.

Also, I was completely lost, because I had many, many ideas – which is a luxury, and it’s part of who I am, but it also makes for chaos and it’s really hard to figure out what you want to do. Plus, I always love everything, so when people say, “Oh, you could do this,” I think, “Oh yeah, I could do that too.” Guess what: you can’t! You really do have to focus on just one or two things and do them well, and one or two or three things can still be a very nice portfolio career – and that’s where I find myself at the moment. But I sometimes need to be careful not to go, “Oh, this is cool,” and go completely in the other direction and then forget what I was actually doing.

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I have a husband who deserves a medal or two, he has been very understanding about these dips – because they just do happen. But he is actually one of the people who was most supportive of me leaving the company. He, quite frankly, had a very miserable bunny coming home on a daily basis! He said, “Right, that’s it. Enough. You hate it. Don’t worry, we’ll make it work one way or another. Quit.” I thought, “Hmm, okay.” And now, still, I don’t have a fixed income. I rely on if I have a customer or not this month, and even then he says, “You know what, go for it. We’ll make it work.” I’m the one who lies awake at night! He doesn’t, bless him.

My parents are also very understanding, which I thought they wouldn’t be. That’s really funny. My parents are relatively traditional in the sense that my mom worked from home and was a teacher, and my dad had a 35-year corporate career with the same company. Now if you grow up with that, that is your example, so my mum had a very steady job, flexible and part-time, but still she knew what she was doing, she enjoyed that, and my dad was always with the same company. Now you come into a P&G, you see yourself becoming your father, and thinking, “I’m not entirely sure if this is the right path for me.” And I was so scared to broach that subject in the very beginning, to talk to my parents and say: “This is not what I would see myself doing for the next 35 years,” but, guess what, they just went, “No, we didn’t think so either.” And now they are very supportive. I call my dad on a regular basis just to kind of ping pong some ideas back and forth, and it’s great.

I guess the fear was in my head – but you should listen to your gut feeling and not to your head every once in a while!

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Freedom. Flexibility. On top of that, I also ride other people’s horses for them, so talk about a portfolio career. I would have never been able to do that if I had a 9-to-5 job. It’s already hard enough to combine just one horse with a full-time job, let alone two or three. Three this morning, actually! It’s something I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy, and being with the horses is also my little bit of ‘disconnect time’. Most of my life takes place online, either in a Skype call or on Instagram or whatever I need to do, it’s all in front of a screen. Being with the horses is my, “I’m not here right now!” And I love doing it. So yeah, the flexibility of having the time to add that into the mix as well is absolutely magnificent.

Rachel’s two loves: her horse, and her husband (not pictured).

It was a bit of a ‘now-or-never’ thing because I had just left, we were financially okay, and I thought, “You know what? If I don’t do it now, I will continue to overthink this for the next five years, and it’s just not going to happen.” So I did it. I now have a very beautiful money-eating machine standing out on top of the hill, who I love to bits. And talking about a support system, I pay for it but I think it’s been part of my support system as well. It gave me a sense of purpose on days that I quite frankly felt useless and didn’t want to get out of bed after leaving the company like that. You have to put some pants on and you have to go to the horse because it will not ride itself. That has been really good as well, and on the bad days it just kind of perks you up and it feels good and it’s wonderful. I can recommend it!

Strangely, it all came together, and if I look back now on how I used to look at things… It’s funny, but that’s why I don’t understand why people get tattoos! They’re there for life, but your life changes, and you should let it change – because what if I was still stuck there? I don’t think I would be very happy. So again, hindsight’s 20/20, I know that now. It looked very different about a year and a half ago – but it’s good!

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

It’s about facing the beast head on. If you’re already on your way to being burnt out and you are unhappy, it will happen. You need to face it head on, and you need to be incredibly honest with yourself. Why am I doing this? For whom am I doing this? And is this really what fits with my core values? Do I really want to sacrifice what I believe in for the good of the company?

Now, if the answer is, “I’m fine with that,” then that’s perfectly fine. Then continue! Maybe you just had a bad boss or a bad month, and then you just need to talk about it and move on. But if that feeling continues to nag, there is something that’s just not matching, it doesn’t line up with what you feel and what you think you should be doing, then you will burn out unless you face it. And facing it can be done in many different ways. ‘Facing it’ can mean learning to deal with it or realising that the situation is temporary, or realising that this might never change and it’s time to go. In my case, time to go, and it was fine. At the end of the day, it was actually perfectly fine.

And I think that’s really important, realising that it’s okay. It is okay to not feel comfortable in a job. It is okay to feel like it’s time for a change, and it’s really, really, okay to take a decision that doesn’t work out very well, because then something else will come along. Nobody’s going to tell you that it’s wrong – or they might tell you that it’s wrong but then maybe they want to leave as well, so you never really know what’s behind that kind of feedback. It’s okay.

I’ve got another great interview for you this month, this one’s with George Beesley. He quit his job in finance to get away from the spreadsheets and explore if there might be something more meaningful that he could do in his work.

George is around 3,000 miles into a cycle tour from Alaska to Argentina, 4 months out of an expected 18-month journey. We’ve been staying in touch for weeks trying to find a time that would work and we finally found a slot where George was staying in the same place for a few days and had Wi-Fi. Hurrah! When I spoke to him, he was freezing cold in a garage – you have to suffer for your art!

We had a great conversation about all sorts of things that I couldn’t capture fully in the written version of the interview, so I do encourage you to watch the full video.

A few of the things that I think are especially important to draw out:

First, the importance of self-care, of following the airline safety advice to “put your oxygen mask on yourself before you help others”. But if you push yourself too hard, you’ll inevitably reach burnout at some point and you’ll be doing yourself and those other people who you’re so desperately trying to help a disservice. We put so much pressure on ourselves to be the absolutely best person that we can be, but sometimes a bit of patience and self-compassion can be in order as we take a step back from all that goal setting and pushing forward.

Next, we put pressure not just on ourselves but also on individual areas of our lives, asking them to deliver absolutely everything we need. For all our talk of the importance of finding meaningful and fulfilling work, it’s too much pressure to put on ourselves and on that job or business to expect that our work can bring us all-encompassing happiness and fulfilment, as we neglect other areas of our lives. What are we going to do all those days we’re not at work? The same goes for a partner: it’s a lot of pressure to expect one person to be your lover, your friend, your coach, your adviser, your whatever other role that you’re expecting them to fill. A happy and fulfilling life (If you’re interested in this, I’m exploring this over on my website onestepoutside.com, through the 5Ls of Live – Love – Learn – Lead – Laugh.)

We also talked a lot about the value of travel in opening up your perspectives of what’s possible, as you meet people of all ages making all kinds of different choices, experiencing life in all sorts of different ways. And that it doesn’t have to be a mega-trip across the world! It can be a mini-adventure, a weekend away… just finding those little ways in which you can get out of your daily routine and see something different.

Read on and watch the interview below!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From finance to cycling

George Beesley started working in finance straight after university. He had studied economics and “that was what everyone was doing”. He quickly realised that it probably wasn’t where he wanted to spend the best years of his life, and with some extra encouragement from his yoga-teacher girlfriend he quit last year. Right now, they’re cycle touring together from Alaska to Argentina, a journey of around 17,000 miles. They’re raising money for the Stroke Association, while George has also started a podcast that he’s running along the way. In terms of what’s next after the trip, he wants to see how the podcast goes and he has a big vision around setting up community centres with the aim of replacing some of the sense of community and structure that religion used to give us.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I went to Yestival in 2016 and Dave Cornthwaite, the organiser, was saying, “Look, now is the time, if you’ve had a dream or something that you really want to do that you’ve been putting off, commit in front of hundreds of people and then you will be chased to do have to it.” I found myself walking up to the front and then I just said, “I’ve always wanted to start a podcast. I’m going to have do it, now that I’ve done this!”

In terms of quitting finance, I’d never planned to stay in a professional job, I’d always wanted to be an entrepreneur and start businesses – but I felt like I lacked experience. And the idea that made me think, “This is the one that I want to put a lot of time, effort and resources into.” So I took that job as more of a learning experience and a chance to meet people, make contacts and move down to London.

So I always knew that I wasn’t going to stay.

Then I qualified (as a Chartered Financial Analyst, CFA). And my girlfriend also hated London, so she was trying to get me out of it, every single minute of the day!

And then my best friend, my mentor and my manager at work, all the same guy, left. He was really helping me with my development in all sorts of fields. (Big shoutout to Vish Hindocha!) He left and then I just felt very uninspired and I lacked energy. It was sort of a safe job for a lot of people, there was no energy or excitement in the day-to-day.

That got me a little bit involved in the adventure community, with people doing that kind of stuff and I heard about my friend Henry quitting his job and cycling from London to Sydney* and I asked myself, “Well, is this really the best way that I can be spending my time right now? What do I want to do?” It wasn’t spreadsheets and risk management and conference calls.

So, I just thought, “You know what? I’m going to take the leap, go for it.” The thing is, you can always go back, if you want to. There are a lot of companies that you can work for in finance management. That’s going to be there, but the opportunity to do a huge trip like this, 18 months away, without a mortgage, kids or anything like that, any big tie…now was the time to do it. So I decided, “Yeah, let’s just go for it.”

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

Sacrificing security is always difficult.

Then my dad had a stroke a while ago, so I moved back home from London, to help out at home and do a little bit of my own life coaching back there. But I was working full-time, I had a couple of businesses, starting a podcast, life coaching, social life, girlfriend and hobbies. I just got a bit burnt out, I sort of thought that I was this endless ball of energy and then finally found my limit. I realised I needed to do something different.

I think the hardest thing for me was probably leaving my family when I felt like I could offer value and help them out, while I was back home. But, also, it was a bit of a double-edged sword, I think in Buddhism they call it ‘naïve kindness’: if you give a lot and then you end up burning yourself out then you can no longer give anymore; you have to be aware of your own state of mind and wellness as well.

So I wanted to leave, but also, I felt, “Should I be leaving right now?” I felt like they needed me, but things seemed good enough, back home and plateaued, they wanted me to go… So that was difficult – but I’m super glad that I did.

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

With making the move to quit work, there’s generally been a stigma against that, especially from our parents’ generation, where the idea was, “You’re lucky to have a job, you’ll have a job for life. Stay in it and appreciate it.” Now, it’s changed. There’s still a bit of a hangover from that – when you tell people that you quit a fancy-sounding job, to go and live in a tent and cycle around and interview people, they’re like, “Hmm, that’s a bit strange.”

You left spreadsheets in foggy London behind for this, George? What were you thinking?!

But Escape the City was pretty cool, it was a nice atmosphere, with encouraging people to say, “Look, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what the next step is, just take the leap.” The YesTribe, Yestival, was great too. That was a good support network and as I mentioned, my girlfriend was trying to drag me away, so she was always just highlighting the great things about quitting your job and following a passion and starting a podcast. That definitely helped, too!

And then, I think a few long conversations with myself. Just going out for long walks in nature and thinking. I consumed a lot of content, podcasts, and so on. And I just thought: “Is it really that big a deal if I quit my job right now?” I sort of just realised that the answer was “No.” As we said before, the opportunity will always be there, to go back. So, there didn’t really seem like a good reason not to.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

I guess there are two sides, there is the podcasting and then the cycle touring.

The podcasting is an amazing excuse to talk to awesome people. You’d never normally be able to monopolise that much of their time, an hour or two hours with somebody who’s doing something really cool, these guys who I would love to get an audience with. And it gives a great opportunity to skip the small talk as well, because it feels a bit like an interview – then you don’t have to talk about the weather and sports. You can get right in there and you can be like, “Boom, what’s the meaning of life? What’s the most important thing that you’ve found?” That’s amazing, I love doing that. Meeting people like Sean Conway and Benedict Allen and all these guys who I admired.

Also to learn to scratch my own itch. I wanted to know, “How do you make a living from adventure and your passion? How do people get paid to do things I thought I would pay for? Things that are fun.” That’s really cool.

Then, cycle touring… You meet new people every day and you get to travel, two things that I really love.

Travelling always just smashes those misconceptions that you have about people, like coming into the States, into Montana, a red state and all the Trump supporters. We definitely had some misconceptions! We actually cycled over the border, from a fairly liberal place in Canada. That same day, we got down into Montana, into a mining village where it’s pretty conservative. The first lady that we saw had this t-shirt on and it said, “Trump, built tough.” And she was lovely, she was a really nice lady! She bought us beers and she let us stay in her garden for free. I love that kind of stuff: just because they have some, what I think are wacky, ideas, it doesn’t mean that they’re not nice people.

It’s also about getting out of your normal experience, to realise: you don’t have to live like this. Most of the time that you’ve spent growing up in a particular environment, you download a certain culture. You download the culture that you should work hard, you should get a job, all the things that we’ve talked about. Whereas, you go to a lot of different parts of the world and you go to Brazil and people are like, “No, you should go surfing and smoke some weed and do some yoga. Just have fun!”

You meet artists and creatives and people who are living in yurts and this whole other way of living life, that you don’t really have exposure to back home. Natives who are still living a more hunter-gatherer type of life, when you go to the jungle. Then you can ask yourself, “What are the best bits that I can take from all these communities and bring them into the way that I live?”

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Don’t just blindly follow your passion. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to offer help and advice to people and some of it is more thoughtful than others; some of it applies more to certain types of people than others.

So, you’ll hear somebody like Alan Watts and his famous talk on YouTube, his lecture that’s everywhere now, on What If Money Was No Object? Then there are people like Joseph Campbell, who said to “Follow your bliss”. These are authors who I love and who I really respect – but that’s one side of the equation. On the other side of the spectrum, you have people like Derek Sivers and the 80000 Hours organisation, who are saying, “That’s a part of the equation; but also look what you’re good at, look at how you can offer the most value to society.” Because real happiness, which I think is what most people are sort of aiming towards, doesn’t just come from doing something that you find fun all the time.

I really like Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, and the idea that motivation comes from autonomy, mastery and purpose. Mastery: what is something that you really want to get good at? What is something that you can spend a long time on? But also, purpose: does this really matter? Say you love skiing, you could go and be a ski instructor – that’s great for some people, but you need to think, “Does that have the element of purpose that I need? Do I feel like I’m helping people?” We all tend to feel a lot better when we think that we’re impacting the world around us positively.

So I think you should look at what you really enjoy, what your passion is, but also, what are you good at? What is going to feel like it’s fulfilling at a higher level? Somewhere in between all of those things, you’ll probably find the best move for you.

Also: it doesn’t always work out. In finance, they call it the survivorship bias, that you only tend to see the companies who win. You only read the biographies of the winners, of the people like Richard Branson, who took a gamble and then made one of the most successful businesses in the world. But they’re outliers, they’re not the norm. Statistically, it’s very unlikely, almost impossible, that you’ll be one of those people if you follow your passion. But that’s not to say don’t try.

We’re putting so much pressure on work to fulfil all of these human needs. We have this huge demand that, “My job must give me every single thing and make me feel like I’m living my ultimate life.” It’s a huge ask, to find a job like that. Some people do it, but it’s very, very difficult. Again, it’s only part of the equation – what are you spending the rest of your time doing? I think Al Humphreys gives the example that you have about 130 days a year when you’re not at work, with weekends, bank holidays and your own holiday from work. So, you can spend nearly a third of the year doing stuff that’s not work! How can you try and reach whatever your goals are or self-actualise outside of work? How can you spend your time? Do you want to volunteer? Is that going to give you a greater sense of purpose in the world? It puts so much pressure on you if you just look for a job that’s going to give you every single need.

When it comes to starting a business, one little bit of advice on that would be to try and start it and test it as much as you can, while you’re still in your full-time job. Seth Godin talks about “the dip”: whenever you start anything new and exciting, you’d be having a great time, because you’re working on a new idea; then, after a while, it starts to get really, really hard… If you want something to really succeed, you have to be willing to wait out the dip and get to the other side, when you start to get the payoff with your business becomes successful, you get regular customers and so on.

So while you’re still in your full-time job, test your ideas, start selling, build a website. As soon as the money starts coming in, then the stress can start to build. So make the transition when you have some kind of proof of concept.

I’m thrilled to be able to share this month’s Fearless Fridays interview with Serena. She was my very first office neighbour in the Geneva office of Procter & Gamble and has since become a client, a business partner, a coach and, most importantly, a loyal and ceaselessly supportive friend. In the interview, she talks about her experience of leaving the corporate environment to start her own businesses – because there have been several – and the challenges that she has come up against.

In a way, Serena was always destined for the entrepreneurial life. Her parents were entrepreneurs, although they were the ones who encouraged her to go into corporate employment in the first place. Her own strengths have also always been more suited to the entrepreneurial world: a creative mind, an innovative approach to business, and an incredible drive.

On the other hand, there are a lot of things that she misses from that corporate world. Being part of a team is a big one. Access to decades of experience in the form of senior managers and mentors is another. And perhaps the biggest challenge with the entrepreneurial journey is the constant stream of failure after failure after failure. They’re not all big failures – more like little disappointments. You put your heart and soul into your work, you’re optimistic and enthusiastic and you believe you’re going to change the world… and then it just doesn’t work out as you had hoped.

I talk a lot of about the importance of celebrating those little wins that you do get from time to time – mostly because it’s something I know I’m not very good at myself!

Watch the full interview or read on below to hear Serena’s story.

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From marketing to baking

Serena De Maio started her career in marketing at Procter & Gamble, where she spent more than ten years. Her parents had always been entrepreneurs – but for them, and therefore for Serena, success meant a career in corporate. Her dad even gave her a book on P&G when she was a teenager. Eventually she decided to embrace that entrepreneurial heritage and leave P&G, pursuing several interesting projects. And today she is running a cake business!

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I always felt that I didn’t fit in 100% into what corporate, or maybe P&G, expected from me. A lot of people encouraged me to be an entrepreneur because I was so innovative; and sometimes I didn’t want to do things the way they had been done before, or how they were usually done. I also had the feeling that maybe I could perform better and be happier as an entrepreneur. I’m still finding this out – but I wake up happy!

I measure success a lot by sales: if I sell, I’m successful; if I’m not selling, I’m not successful. My vision would be to be a well-known and respected entrepreneur. If I manage a good advertising campaign or a good communication and I get orders, that’s success for me. Once I’ve sold the cake, if the cake was appreciated and people recommend me – that’s success.

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

There are many challenges when you leave corporate to start your own business. For me, one of the biggest challenges is being alone: you’re alone all of the time. Compared to when I was either part of a team or leading a large organisation, I wake up in the morning and I’m alone, and I go to bed and I’m alone. And I’m happy, and I’ve usually had a good day and learned tonnes. But the interaction and the jokes, and just chatting with people and having a coffee… Especially at the beginning, I was missing it a lot.

Also growing people, passing on knowledge, is something that I love and that people appreciated so I think I was good at it! The way I compensate is that I started teaching at a university – that’s my way to pass on knowledge, have interaction and have fun with other people. I’m also coaching startups and young professionals.

Another one is that the life of an entrepreneur is just a sequence of infinite failures. And then from time to time, there is a blip of, WOW, success! So it’s: failure, failure, failure, you try, you try, you try – and then a little success – and then you try, you try, you try… It’s very different from corporate where you might argue those are not real successes or not as big as we think; but the entire team is behind trying to prepare a huge presentation, or convincing management. You have a cycle of build-up and then successful moments and then build-up again. And then celebration with the team – this I’m missing.

I don’t know if it’s being an entrepreneur or it’s our personality, but we never celebrate our successful moments. As a team, as a big organisation, you take the time – because people work so hard and you need to reward them. As an entrepreneur, since I left corporate, I don’t. I do write cards to my boyfriend thanking him, to let him know that I appreciate his work!

The final thing is not knowing how to succeed. It’s just a black box – if you ask me for advice, I give you advice, but I have no idea! This is very different from corporate, where you have an entire team and management that have years and years of experience. They might also then tend to do the same things, which is a bad thing, but at least there is a sort of database of high-quality knowledge. You can talk to people and learn from others. As an entrepreneur, you just don’t know. The people you could learn from perfectly are your competitors, so it’s a very strange situation. I’m missing that group knowledge.

As an entrepreneur, to succeed you need to sell. I learned and I’m scared… When I give a price, I know that it’s a high price, and I always wonder, “Is this person going to tell me to go to hell?” But they don’t. And I’m tougher and tougher.

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

In terms of people connections, on the cake business I work with my boyfriend! So of course we interact and exchange a lot.

I’ve just joined a women’s network in Geneva and hopefully I will be not just a member but also put in place trainings to pass on this knowledge. I like to be around people and I like to help people.

Then I have a couple of good friends who I call or message often.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Serena has discovered that she’s really good with her hands! Here’s one of her impressive creations that has gained a lot of publicity recently and is based on the famous Ouchi illusion cake.

Learning a lot, learning so much.

And, from time to time, some stuff works! It feels amazing because it’s 100% your work, which is different from corporate.

I work all the time – I choose to do it, so I guess it’s good! – but I can decide, okay, let’s go to the movies, or work out. I never put an alarm clock anymore – although I wake up now at five because I want to work and I want my business to grow!

Whenever I feel someone is giving me orders, this I don’t like anymore. I think once you get out of the hierarchy of a company it would be very difficult to go back. Not having a boss is good! I like more freedom.

I also discovered that I’m pretty good with my hands: I can make cakes and good decorations, and that’s very surprising. I think it’s in my genes – my mother is very good at drawing – but my parents never fuelled it, or got training for me. Right now, I need to step up when we have a lot of orders, and I can do a lot of things. That’s very satisfying! Since being an entrepreneur, I had to learn Photoshop and all sorts of Adobe, I shoot my videos, I take pictures, I took classes… So a lot of creativity.

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

I am 100% sure that you cannot be an entrepreneur in parallel to your current career. If you want to change career or have a business, it’s very difficult – and I tried – to do it in parallel.

However, I also do think that you need to try when you’re still in your career. I think human beings want to be secure and feel that they have their basic needs covered, and so it’s good to try your next career, or try to have a little business, so that you can see if you like it. In my first business, my partner realised that some of the elements of being an entrepreneur she didn’t like, and some other elements she loved. If you don’t try, you don’t know.

And what you’ll probably discover is that it takes more effort than you think. So you’d better try and be sure that you like it, and take your time before you move onto your next career or your next move.

I’d say you need to have at least ten sales – and not to your family and friends, because they show you love, they don’t show you that you have a good product or service! Then you have a feel for how to grow to the level you want your revenue to be: Okay, I’ve done this to sell 10 products, if I do this, this and this, then I will sell 20, or 30. But for sure, you need to sell and make sure that you really have a good product or service. In reality, selling is market research. You try – okay, he didn’t understand, or he didn’t buy, why didn’t he buy?– then you try again and again and again. You’re fine-tuning your offering until you crack it. That’s how I define a good idea.

You can find Serena’s new venture on her website and read more about her teaching and other work on LinkedIn.

Have you made big changes in your life and want to inspire others to do the same? Get in touch to share your story!

This month, I’m happy to share an interview with Joanna Gaudoin. She has a similar story to mine in that she got into marketing ‘accidentally’ at the start of her career and is now running her own business.

Having decided that she wanted to change career direction, part of the process of discovering what to do next involved working with a career coach. Rather than coming away with the one secret answer to what was the perfect job, she did a lot of important work on identifying her skills and her fundamental values, as well as defining two key criteria for the right career for her personally: (i) doing something different every day, and (ii) helping other people develop in their careers. She has also worked with different business coaches at different stages of her business, recognising that you can’t do everything on your own and you need to look for the right kind of help as you face different challenges throughout your career and business development.

As do many of the entrepreneurs and coaches I’ve interviewed, Joanna particularly enjoys the flexibility that this kind of work allows her, as well as the close connection that she has to her clients and being able to really see the impact she’s having in their lives.

I’d encourage you to watch the full 30-minute interview as there are many more insights than I could possibly fit into the written version!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From marketing to making an impact

Joanna Gaudoin started her career in marketing in “the glamorous world of toilet roll, tampons and nappies” at Kimberly-Clark in Paris after university, after which she worked with puppies on Andrex in the UK. Getting itchy feet out in Kent and having ended up in marketing by accident, she decided to move to London where she worked in various consultancies. On her husband’s recommendation, Joanna worked with a career coach for six months while volunteering and continuing with some freelance work. Discovering that she wanted every day to be different, that she hated sitting all day at a desk, and that she wanted to help people get the development they needed to get what they wanted in their careers, she first trained as an image and impact consultant. Having established her business end of 2011, she has now broadened her offering to help her clients make a positive personal impact and build relationships at work.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I made a bit of a funny leap and went and worked for a consultancy in merger and acquisitions, commercial due diligence. I have to admit that was the worst however-long of my life! It was a disaster. The environment didn’t suit me, there wasn’t much people contact, very dry… I remember one of my first tasks being,“Can you estimate the global market for mechanical seals?” I didn’t even know what a mechanical seal was! I worked there for around a year and half and was thinking, “What on earth do I do now?”

Then the market downturn came and I had to try and cover up my joy when they told me I was going to be made redundant. So I got paid to leave, when I’d been thinking about how to extricate myself from there! I spent three months doing a bit of volunteer work, looking for a new role, and then did what I call my final corporate job in a small consultancy again. I liked the team, it was a nice location in London, it worked very well; but unfortunately some of the directors decided to split off and do their own thing, and they couldn’t afford to take the whole team with them. Months went by with clients going, not really knowing if we would be paid; that was a very difficult time. And then we ended up being integrated into a business that we used to recommend to clients, so we had to change the model of what we did because we weren’t impartial any more. That was really the point when it crystallised for me that the work wasn’t right, there wasn’t enough client contact, the work was too conceptual…

My then boyfriend, now husband, suggested that I work with a career coach. At that point, six years ago, coaching wasn’t as mainstream – I think it’s a really good thing that that’s changed. She was excellent, and focused on career transitions. She worked with me over six months to help me work out what I was good at, what my values were, what I was interested in, and so on, through lots of different mechanisms and exercises that I’d never done before.

I had intended to carry on working but I have to admit that after two months I’d had enough and one Friday afternoon I just decided that I was going to quit; and on the Monday, I quit!

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

Definitely not knowing what to do; and where to get started. A lot of people just start up a business in the field they were in before. I’m not saying it’s easy but they know what they’re doing, they know the industry, and they can potentially pull a few clients. The challenge of saying: “I want to do this, I see the value of it… how do I get going?” That for me was where I started networking, networking, networking!

Actually, that’s my challenge at the moment: 80-90% of my work comes from networking referrals. It’s a great position to be in but it makes it very reliant on you being out there and doing all that as well as preparing and delivering work, doing marketing, admin, and all the rest. So one of my challenges now is looking at how I reduce that and get work from more sources.

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I think you have to be continually evaluating how you need to develop yourself, and what support you need to do that. During the five years or so that I’ve run my business, SABMiller asked me to go back as a part-time contractor – I ended up back there for nine months, full time, and that derailed my business slightly. At that point, I worked with a business coach and she really helped me focus. And now I’m at another point where I need a different amount of help and I’m going to work with someone different to do that. So you start with something but it’s being open to how that’s going to grow and develop; and you need to think about who can support you at different times to get there – because you can’t do it all on your own!

I became an associate with a company called Voice at the Table two or three years ago. I’d met the lady who owns that previously, when she was still in a corporate job, and she then contacted me when she was setting up her own business. She works with a network of associates, and some of those people have become friends and are very supportive. For instance, I trained in a new area this year, Positive Political Intelligence, which is the first bit of work that I now offer that is based on a diagnostic tool; and I ran my first tester workshop with that group, from Voice at the Table, to practise and to get their feedback.

I’m hoping to start an accountability group with another lady I know from networking… I think you just find people! We have really honest conversations about our businesses and that’s really valuable.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

The ‘aha’ moments when people get it and they see the impact that change can have. I emailed a client yesterday – I’d only had three sessions with him and there was quite a lot to work on. I asked him and his boss how things were going, and I got an email back from her saying that, yes, he presented something yesterday and it was so much better than before, and he said he felt it went well too. So it’s really amazing when you see the impact you can have on someone else’s life.

And the ability to organise your own time and just enjoy your life a bit more! One particularly lovely Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I decided to do a few hours of gardening and then pick up my work at the weekend when it was going to rain. It’s about balancing doing work you enjoy, earning what you need to, to lead the life you want.

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Definitely get some external support. Friends and family can be helpful but they almost know you too well.

I was very fortunate, I’d sold a flat when I was younger and so when I started my coaching I didn’t have to work as I had a few months of savings to live on – if you can do that, and throw yourself full-on into it, that is the best way. Otherwise you just don’t end up doing it, because you’re doing a full-time job. Think about what’s realistic for you.

Also, formal training is really important to me; but sometimes people spend too long getting all the right training in order and not actually getting going with anything, and I’ve found adding things as I go along has worked much better for me. So really focus on: let’s start with this, and let’s build from there. It’s easy to lose time doing stuff that’s really not going to do anything for you. Done is better perfect!